SKID ROW's Next Album To Feature Collaborations With COREY TAYLOR, HALESTORM Members

SKID ROW has collaborated with several other artists, including members of SLIPKNOT and HALESTORM, on the songwriting process for the final installment of the band's "United World Rebellion" trilogy. The follow-up to 2014's "Rise Of The Damnation Army - United World Rebellion: Chapter Two" and 2013's "United World Rebellion: Chapter One" will mark the band's first release with the South African-born, British-based vocalist ZP Theart (DRAGONFORCE, TANK, I AM I), who officially joined SKID ROW last year.

In a brand new interview with Australia's Heavy music magazine, SKID ROW bassist Rachel Bolan confirmed that the group's next release will be "a full-length record" which will tentatively arrive in 2019. "We've got a lot of really cool songs, man," he said (see video below). "It's the first time in our career we've written with people that weren't… just outside guys. We worked with friends; we went to friends first. Like Corey Taylor, who's a good friend of ours. We [went], 'Hey, let's get together,' 'All right,' and we wrote a really cool song. And the cool part is he's a SKID ROW fan, and we are STONE SOUR and SLIPKNOT fans. And then Lzzy [Hale] and Joe [Hottinger] from HALESTORM, we sat down with them and came up with some cool stuff. After all the laughter was done, because Joe Hottinger is one of the funniest people on the face of the earth, and it's just really hard to concentrate when that guy is making you laugh. They are really fun, and those guys, three out of the four of them live down in Nashville and we're always at each other's houses for holidays and stuff. We've all become very close. And yeah, so we did that and came up with a few good songs, and it's opened up a lot of doors in our mind, 'cause we always were, like, 'No. We're writing everything. That's it. We're doing it all.' And I'm, like, 'Let's make this super special and just go with people that are friends. We've got a lot of friends that are really good songwriters. Let's do it. Wherever it ends up, let's just do it and see what happens.' So that's what we did."

According to Bolan, SKID ROW also collaborated with songwriter-for-hire Marti Frederiksen, who has previously worked with AEROSMITH, DEF LEPPARD, Jonny Lang and Sheryl Crow. "[Marti] wrote with Damon Johnson from BROTHER CANE — 'Got No Shame', they wrote that song, which is one of my favorite rock songs," Rachel said. "And we knew Marti, and we wrote some songs with him, and we respected the shit out of him."

Asked what it was like writing with somebody other than SKID ROW guitarist Dave "Snake" Sabo for a new album for the first time in his career, Bolan said: "I like both [ways of writing] now. At least for me, to conceptually get my head around writing with someone other than Snake just seems absolutely nuts. And my mind opened up when I moved to Nashville, 'cause I write songs for a bunch of people, whether it's country or pop or rock or whatever. And it was a really weird thing for me to get used to, because Snake and I, we don't have a formula, but we kind of have a system, and we know what each other are thinking. Where I'm sitting in a room, and some people I knew, some people I didn't, and these are just strangers, and they're thinking one way, I'm thinking the other, so that opened my mind. And I said to Snake, I go, 'We could definitely write with other people. Let's at least try.' And that's why we started with friends, because we'd be more comfortable around them and they understand where we're coming from and all that."

He added: "It's cool. I just like writing songs. I like the whole process of creating something from just an idea that's scribbled on paper to getting an album and looking at it and listening to it. I just love that whole process."

SKID ROW's upcoming release will see the band reunited with famed rock/metal producer Michael Wagener, who worked on SKID ROW's first two albums, 1989's "Skid Row" and 1991's "Slave To The Grind", as well as 2006's "Revolutions Per Minute".

"We have a bunch of demos done," Bolan said. "We're so busy this year — we have, like, I think 80 shows on the books between U.K., America, Europe, Asia, Australia… So we've got a lot of shows, and then Michael has a few other things he has to finish this year, so it's the scheduling that we're trying to get together. And we're probably gonna do it the old-school way, where you go home, you record some stuff, you go back on the road, go home and record… That's gonna be nerve wracking — we've never done it like that before — but I'm looking forward to just doing it."

Rachel said that he is especially thrilled to once again be making an album with Wagener, whom he called "one of my best friends." The bassist said: "We worked together on other stuff [since 'Revolutions Per Minute'], and if he has an artist come in [for a recording session at his studio], he's, like, 'Hey, you wanna play bass on this,' and I'm, like, 'Yeah.' I mean, we're literally 25 or 30 minutes apart in Tennessee, and he's got a badass studio out there. And he actually helped me build my studio at my house."

Despite having played sporadic shows with SKID ROW for a year, Theart wasn't officially announced as the band's new frontman until January 2017.

Theart stepped into the group following the departure of Tony Harnell, the former TNT frontman who joined SKID ROW in April 2015 as the replacement for Johnny Solinger, the band's singer of 15 years.

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